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Sophie Gertrud Lasdun * 1914

Grindelallee 126 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

1942 Auschwitz
ermordet

further stumbling stones in Grindelallee 126:
Selma Cohn, Josef Lasdun, Aurelia Lasdun, Charles Lasdun, Fanny Lasdun, Sulamith Lasdun, Valesca Lewin

Josef Lasdun, born on 6 Dec. 1878 in Schatzk (Shatsk) near Minsk, interned on 9 Oct. 1942 in Westerbork, deported on 6 Nov. 1942 from there to Auschwitz, murdered on 9 Nov. 1942

Aurelia (Rahel) Lasdun, née Kaplan, born on 25 or 28 Oct. 1889 in Memel (today Klaipeda in Lithuania), interned on 9 Oct. 1942 in Westerbork, deported on 6 Nov. 1942 from there to Auschwitz, murdered on 9 Nov. 1942

Sophie Gertrud Lasdun, born on 28 July 1914 in Königsberg (today Kaliningrad in Russia), interned on 9 Oct. 1942 in Westerbork, deported on 6 Nov. 1942 from there to Auschwitz, murdered 9 Nov. 1942

Ita Leah Lasdun, born on 7 Sept. 1915 in Hamburg, perished, location unknown

Sulamith Lasdun, born on 18 Nov. 1918 in Hamburg, interned on 9 Oct. 1942 in Westerbork, deported on 6 Nov. 1942 from there to Auschwitz, murdered on 9 Nov. 1942

Charles Lasdun, born on 7 June 1920 in Hamburg, deported from Westerbork to Auschwitz on 16 Feb. 1943, murdered

Fanny Lasdun, born on 31 May 1924 in Hamburg, interned on 9 Oct. 1942 in Westerbork, deported on 6 Nov. 1942 from there to Auschwitz, murdered on 9 Nov. 1942

Grindelallee 126

After spending years together in Königsberg, the married couple Josef and Aurelia Lasdun moved to Hamburg during the First World War – probably in 1915 – where the import and export merchant Josef Lasdun joined the Jewish Community together with his brother Leo Lasdun on 25 Jan. 1920. Josef Lasdun’s parents were Beer and Goldt, née Nachamzik. Of the children Sophie Gertrud, Ita Lea, Theodor and Sulamith that had been born by then all except for the eldest daughter, who was born in Königsberg, were natives of Hamburg; Theodor was born on 11 Mar. 1917. Until 1926, the family grew by another three children: Charles, Fanny, and Isaak Samuel, born on 26 Mar. 1926, which meant that the marriage produced a total of four daughters and three sons. Of the daughters, none survived, of the sons two: Theodor and Isaac Samuel.

Josef Lasdun applied for a visa to the Netherlands as early as 1931, which was issued to him with a validity of two years. As a result, he repeatedly spent time in the Netherlands between 1931 and 1933. In Apr. 1933, he fled for three months to Amsterdam, where he stayed at the Plantage Kerklaan 16, and from there to Zaandvort, where he lived for three years at Koninginnenweg 9. Around 1937, he moved to Rotterdam, where he was issued an identity card in the same year.

His oldest daughter Sophie Gertrud wanted to start training as a masseuse in 1933 – at a time the National Socialists were already in power. When she was denied this, she also fled to the Netherlands on 16 Oct. 1933. In 1937/38, she was a patient of the psychiatric hospital in Apeldoorn for some time.

Aurelia Lasdun followed her husband to the Netherlands in 1937 or 1938, probably together with the children Sulamith, Fanny, and Isaak. She had first waited for her daughter Ita Lea to complete her high school graduation (Abitur) at the Talmud Tora School on 25 Feb. 1935. According to the brothers Theodor and Isaak, Ita Lea did not go along to the Netherlands, but was deported while still in Germany, "right at the beginning of the intensive persecution of the Jews.” According to the International Red Cross, she is considered deceased as of 8 May 1945. Her last address indicated was Germany, Westphalia. Sulamith Lasdun lived in Rotterdam and Arnhem until her internment in Westerbork in Oct. 1942. From there, she intended to emigrate to Palestine, but she was no longer able to do so. As late as May 1941, she had got engaged to Isaak (Isak) Glattstein in Rotterdam. He was born on 11 Feb. 1910 in Perekinsko (Perehinske, then in the Austro-Hungarian crown land of Galicia, now Ukraine) and worked as a textile trader. He was murdered in Auschwitz on 20 Mar. 1945.

Charles Lasdun attended the Talmud Tora School until 1937. In view of increasing persecution, he did not graduate and fled to join his father in Rotterdam in October of the same year, where he worked as an independent representative.

With the occupation of the Netherlands by the German Wehrmacht in May 1940, the persecution of the Jews was continued in that country, too. Not only the business existence, but also life and limb were increasingly threatened. On 9 Oct. 1942, Josef and Aurelia Lasdun as well as their daughters Sophie, Fanny, and Sulamith were taken to the Westerbork "transit camp,” deported from there to Auschwitz on 6 Nov. 1942, and murdered on 9 Nov. 1942. Charles Lasdun, deported from Westerbork to Auschwitz on 16 Feb. 1943, did not survive this place of terror either.

How the youngest son, Isaac Samuel, survived could not be clarified. He was interned in the Vught camp on 9 Apr. 1943; it is unclear whether he was one of the prisoners liberated there.

The refugee path of the oldest son, Theodor, who survived the Holocaust, shows how the odyssey of a young person could unfold within the span of 15 years: uprooted, separated from his family and without completed vocational training, he fled from Germany via Russia, Japan, and China to the USA. Actually, he had intended to join his father’s business after completing his intermediate secondary school certificate (mittlere Reife) and commercial schooling, but in Apr. 1933, when he was 16, he was forced to flee like his father. He received a spa visa from the Lithuanian consul to Memel and, at the end of the spa season, a student visa to Telsiai (Telshi), where a rabbi seminar was located. Any employment was forbidden to him; nevertheless, he had to have the visa renewed every three months at great cost and difficulty. He attended the preparatory school for the rabbinical seminar. In 1940, he received a transit visa to Japan from the Japanese consulate in Kovno (Kaunas) and made his way through Russia to reach the Japanese port of Kobe. After a stay of several months there, he was deported to Shanghai and lived from 18 May 1943 to 15 Aug. 1945 in the Shanghai ghetto, "like all refugees.” In early 1947, he received a student visa to the USA and attended the Theological Seminary in Cleveland/Ohio until 1949. In the summer of 1949, he married and henceforth lived as a bookseller in New York. Isaak Samuel Lasdun resided in Brussels after the war.

Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

© Dieter Wolf

Quellen: 1; 5; 8; StaH 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 2603, 43374, 40877, 42493 u. 42315; E-Mail-Auskunft v. Pauline Pieper, Medewerker Landelijk Steunpunt Gastsprekers WO II-Heden, Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork, 10.10.2016; Digitales Archiv IST Bad Arolsen, Teilbestand 1.2.4.2. Dok. ID 12763704,12763705, 12763708, 12763711, 12763713, 12763716, 12763717, (Holland, Kriegszeitkartei der Juden); Teilbestand 6.3.3.2.Dok. ID 99416336 – Korrespondenzakte T/D 422931 und ID 99416345 – Korrespondenzakte T/D 422932; Teilbestand 3.1.1.3. Dok. ID 78772918 – Erfassung von befreiten Verfolgten an unterschiedlichen Orten; www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/130867/isak-glattstein (Zugriff 25.12.2016)
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